Google alters its algorithm to weed out misinformation about Holocaust

Google has altered the results shown when people search for ‘Holocaust’. This is done because of the criticism Google received that the websites led people to destruction.

Earlier, the top result for the search ‘Did the Holocaust happen’? was an article by white supremacist site Stormfront entitled: ’10 reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen’. This article has now been removed by the search engine, so it no longer appears in US and UK.

Google is also refining its algorithm to sort out the ‘non-authoritative’ information. It said that the aim is to provide ‘authoritative results’ for search queries while offering ‘a breadth of diverse content from a variety of sources.’

A statement released by the company read, “Judging which pages on the web, best answer a query is a challenging problem and we don’t always get it right.”

The company also mentioned that recent changes to its algorithm ‘will help surface more high quality, credible content. And will continue to change our algorithms over time in order to tackle these challenges.’

A Google spokesperson recently told Forbes, “We are saddened to see that hate organizations still exist. The fact that hate sites appear in Search results does not mean that Google endorses these views.”

“We do not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content, malware and violations of our webmaster guidelines,” he added.

The Holocaust search fiasco is just another issue for the internet giant. Last month, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, while responding to complaints about fake news related to US elections, said that the company receives billions of queries daily.

“There have been a couple of incidences where it has been pointed out and we didn’t get it right. And so it is a learning moment for us and we will definitely work to fix it,” Pichai said in a BBC interview last month.

Google is world’s leading search engine and responded to the criticism by pledging to cut off advertising revenues to hoax websites and take necessary steps to sort out the misinformation.